BT is working on a phone directory that calculates “small world” networks. (That link, alas, is to a PR piece — lots of words, but the tech content, she is not so much.)

The system, being tested internally at BT, is designed so that when you want to look up the number of a Paul Kim or Matt Jones, it presents you the possible numbers sorted by social proximity, not geographic location. “You are likely to want the Matt Jones connected to you through Ben, Alice and Tom, not the Matt Jones who is your boss’s secretary’s dentist’s cousin.”

There is one interesting bit of speculation in the piece — while the original design was to improve disambiguation in large search spaces by adding social gradients, the project could also represent an alternate way of discovering unlisted numbers for mobile addresses:
“SWORD could populate a database by utilising people’s personal address books, stored from their mobile phones,” Paul Toms added.

For example, if you want to contact a friend of a friend, whose number you do not have, it could be ascertained via a link to a mutual acquaintance. Paul added: “It’s a question of getting the timing right, and while obvious security issues would need to take precedent, the potential for SWORD to become a useful means of finding mobile numbers is a very interesting prospect.”

Its a switch from a list approach to phone directories — you’re on or off — to a social map — only show my number to friends of friends. (And within 6 months of launch, there would be people working to get the world’s biggest mobile phone list, and then selling access to it…)2004-05-07, door Inne ten Have

Band to Band.com

Bands have a tendency to share band members from time to time and as a result it is not difficult to construct a simple "family tree" based upon the interrelationship of band members. We at BandToBand.com decided to find out how large this extended tree is and the following list of bands is that result. Each band listed below is connected to every other band listed based upon this family tree principle.